


A Violent End

by glimmerglanger



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, F/F, Future Fic, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 02:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18326876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Once upon a time there were two best friends that eventually weren’t. That’s part of the story. Once upon a time there were two child-soldiers that ended up on different sides of a war that started before they were born. That’s part of the story. Once upon a time there were two girls in love. And that’s part of the story, too.It was a story that was always going to end in blood.





	A Violent End

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my long delayed Bad Things Happen Bingo card for the square: Put Down Your Gun and Step Away. I'm going to try to finish the card, we'll see how it goes.

Once upon a time there were two best friends that eventually weren’t. That’s part of the story. Once upon a time there were two child-soldiers that ended up on different sides of a war that started before they were born. That’s part of the story. Once upon a time there were two girls in love. And that’s part of the story, too.

It was a story that was always going to end in blood.

Once upon a time a young woman named Adora, named She-Ra, named Princess of Power, cornered the final enemy of her people on the field of battle. She strode forward in glorious light, tall and striking as a goddess made flesh. Her enemy, a skeletal thing called Hordak watched her come, carving her way through leagues of soldiers just to reach him.

He looked around in that moment. A few soldiers stood near him, fighting against the rebellious fools who seemed determined to pursue this foolish course to the end. One caught Hordak’s eye, his second-in-command, a young woman watching She-Ra with an unreadable expression, one he’d been watching for so many long years.

She-Ra bore down on him like the wrath of the gods themselves. He took stock of the battle and smiled, shifting the weapon in his hands, preparing for her final approach.

She lunged at him, in the end, her face empty of emotion and full of terrible power. He knew, in that instant, that he would not stand against her. And so he knew he had made the right choice when he grabbed his second-in-command, the woman called Catra, and pulled her close as she struggled, tucking the barrel of his weapon in hard below her jaw.

Her breath rasped out in a thin wheeze. He felt her claws sink into his arm and then retract, terribly slowly. She dangled off the ground in his grip.

And She-Ra froze, terrible sword raised and aglow, something moving behind her flat eyes.

“Ah,” Hordak said, a cold smile curling across his face. “I thought so. Put down the sword.”

She-Ra stared at Catra for a long moment, her expression as still as marble. He could feel Catra’s pulse beating wildly against his palm. He smelled the sweat of her body. It had been a long fight, and they were losing. They should have lost.

But he had found the weakness of their champion.

He tightened his grip around Catra’s neck and listened to the strangled sound she made. She-Ra’s eyes darkened, her brows drawing together as a frown curved her mouth. “I said,” he repeated, “put down the sword. And then step away. Or I will kill her.”

Catra laughed, then, the sound wheezing from his grip on her throat. She laughed, and he felt the hot wetness of tears falling on his hand and arm. “Idiot,” she rasped, “idiot, she doesn’t--”

She stopped speaking at the sound of the sword hitting the ground.

Wild, terrible joy raged in his chest as quiet swept out through the battlefield, as though the soft sound of impact echoed through the minds of the gathered armies. Before him, the warrior shimmered, shifting shape, becoming small and weak.

Adora glared up at him, her hands balled into fists. “Let her go,” she ordered, as though she were in any place to give orders to him.

“Adora,” Catra rasped, “what are you--”

“Step back,” he ordered, tightening his grip again. He grew tired of these interrupts. “Order your armies to stand down.”

For a moment, Adora did not move, her gaze riveted on Catra, and then she took a jerky step backwards. “I’ll order them to stand down when you let her go,” she said.

“Adora?” Catra’s voice broke. She scratched at his hand with one hand, but her other arm fell limp. She was going limp all over. He no longer felt the lash of her tail.

“It’s going to be okay, Catra,” Adora said, and for a moment her face looked as cold and hard as it did when she wore the She-Ra form. She scowled up at him. “I did what you asked. Put her down.”

He looked across the battlefield, then, and realized he did not need to wait for her to tell her armies to stand down. They were falling apart all on their own, confused and distracted by this event playing out in the midst of the field of battle. They were being driven back, falling to his superior troops.

A smile stretched across his face. He had thought, for a moment, that he might lose. But these people were weak. They had always been so. He rasped out a laugh and tightened his grip. “No,” he said, “I don’t think I will.”

Adora’s eyes flashed. She took a step forward, “You said--”

“I lied,” Hordak said, grinning. “And after everything you’ve done, I’m going to enjoy seeing your face when I kill her. And when I wipe out your army. I think I’ll wait until after that’s done to kill you.”

Catra’s pulse was thready against his skin. She dug her claws into the back of his hand, the pain easy to ignore in the surge of victory, and he said, “You can beg if you like, I’ll--”

The pain took him by surprise. Something sharp slid into his gut, cutting upwards, and he reacted, squeezing the trigger even as Catra jerked anew. He felt her go abruptly limp and dropped her to the ground, where she sprawled, limp.

She fell out of his circle of concern. He stared down at his gut, at the hilt of the knife protruding from his midsection. It was of Horde design, sharp and hooked on the end. Coated with poison. He reached to touch it and then stopped himself, jerking his head up at a terrible scream.

He had just enough time to see the undone fury in Adora’s expression, and then there was nothing but pain, white hot light entering his chest and exiting his back. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

She twisted the blade, cracking ribs and shredding flesh, a cruel touch that belied her heritage and that made him, somewhere down deep, proud. There was hatred in her eyes, pure and deep, in the curl of her lip and the way she bared her teeth.

She had not, he noticed, as he fell to his knees and she jerked the blade free with a roar, changed into She-Ra.

He wondered if she would be able to ever again, as she glared down, put her foot on his shoulder, and pushed him over onto his back. She resettled the giant blade in her grip, standing over him and lifting it, and there was darkness in her, the darkness he’d known lingered there when she was a child, a kernel of true hatred at last brought to life and--

“Adora?” 

The word was barely a rasp of sound, but it caught Adora’s attention as though it were the loudest thing on the field of battle. She looked to the side and stepped away from him, the blade dropping in her grip.

He wanted to roll after her, to grab her leg, to grab a weapon, even. His arms would not obey him. His body refused all commands. Something wet rattled in his lungs and he tasted blood in his mouth. He managed, after a struggle, to turn his head to the side.

Adora fell to her knees beside Catra’s crumpled form, hands hovering as though afraid to touch. After a moment, she marshalled the courage to touch a shoulder, and Catra made a terrible, quiet sound.

“Medic!” Adora yelled, her voice loud and cracking as she rolled Catra gently onto her back. There was ruin across Catra’s jaw and throat, but she had moved enough to avoid taking the bolt through her head. Her fingers twitched.

She gurgled something that didn’t manage to be words.

“Sh, sh,” Adora begged, tearing off her jacket and applying pressure to the wounds. No color remained in her face. “I said I need a medic!” she screamed, but the words were growing hard to hear. The light seemed to be going out of the world. “It’s going to be okay-” he heard Adora saying, steely determination coming into her voice - “you’re going to be okay, I’ve got you now.”

He closed his eyes, then, as the darkness closed all around him.


End file.
